{250} At this time Norman Cross and the other existing prisons were greatly overcrowded, but Wellington found it impossible to guard and maintain his prisoners on the Continent. Not only were the troops actually captured overwhelmingly numerous, but to their number were added deserters. In one of his dispatches, he writes: “Two battalions of the Regiment of Nassau, and one of Frankfort having quitted the enemies’ Army and passed over to that under my command. . . . I now send these troops to England.” The long-delayed completion of the prisons at Dartmoor and Perth would relieve the overcrowding of Norman Cross; but the resources of the staff must, in the meantime, have been strained to an extreme point to prevent the evils which might result from the state of matters. The breakdown of the various negotiations for exchange prevented the relief which was afforded during the first period of the war by the steady drain of prisoners sent back to their own country. {252} It is said that a memorandum exists in a private diary that the price paid for a picture of straw marquetry of Peterborough Cathedral was only £2; the picture must have taken weeks to construct. {253a} The prison register confirms this paragraph. The last death certificate is that of Petronio Lambertini, a soldier of the Italian Regiment of the French Army. He died of consumption, and was presumably the last prisoner buried in the cemetery adjoining the North Road. {253b} _Loc. cit._, p. 120. {254} The copy of the catalogue used by the auctioneer, with his note of the purchaser of and the price paid for each lot, is for the time in the writer’s hands, and has afforded much information, especially as to the construction of the buildings and the use to which each was appropriated. Two years before this sale took place the Depot had been evacuated, and in the Public Record Office is the Barrack Master’s receipt to Captain Hanwell, dated 30th October 1814, for the Depot at Norman Cross, delivered over to him, agreeably to the Transport Board’s order of 24th September 1814. The document consists of ten pages in double columns. {267} _Admiralty Records_, _Transport Department_, _Minutes No._ 38; _Records of Captains’ Services_, O’ Byrne; _Naval Biographical Dictionary_; _Naval Chronicle_, vol. viii., 438; xiv., 283; xvi., 107, 108; xviii., 28; xix., 170–2; _The Times_, 26th February 1842. {276} M. Otto had at the date of this letter succeeded M. Niou as Commissary for the French Prisoners of War confined in Great Britain. {283} This was written three months before the fatal epidemic broke out in the prison.—T. J. W. {286a} The number stated to be sick, on the 30th April 1810, includes convalescents, cases of wounds, accidents, etc. {286b} _Parliamentary Papers_, 1810–11, vol. xi. (263), p. 115. {312} This is not a facsimile copy of the Register, which contains many abbreviations; it has been set out in columns, and abbreviated words have been written in full.